Food And Wine

05 LUG 2015
Published in:
Food And Wine

THE RECIPE OF THE FUTURE

By an award-winning chef, the ingredients of a good, healthy, conscious cuisine. To save taste, culture and planet.

If food is culture, then cooking can make a big difference on our upcoming future. We’ve talked about it with Ettore Bocchia, one star Michelin, chef of the Mistral Restaurant of Grand Hotel Villa Serbelloni, who also reveals his perspective on Expo and the future of food .

“Today a quality cuisine is necessarily also a cuisine that protects the territory and small producers. A cuisine that supports the short chain and the principle of its absolute transparency” says the chef “As owners of Mistral Restaurant we have walked down this path for 10 years, but I think that nowadays also private consumers have become aware about it.Now we are not able to leave out of consideration that “eating” is first of all a choice and, every time we choose, we affect not only the evolution or involution of our body, but also of our culture, our economy, our country and our planet”.

Does more consciousness then mean a better future not only in the dish?

“Right. If in the past a massive consumption of industrial products - often at low prices - has contributed to drastically reduce the number of small producers, today, with the revival of local food, and, by eliminating some passages from the field to the plate, we favor the return of young farmers (often trained and with many innovative ideas) to the estate and the production of the quality products that are within the Italian cultural DNA”.

How to guarantee a quality cuisine

By becoming more aware and competent. Not just reach out on the supermarket shelf:
we must read the label to check the quality of the ingredients and know where the product comes from. We should also look for small businesses that protect the excellence by promoting a food culture that balances the junk food culture that has spread in the last 30 years.

Is Expo helping us hereto?

Definitely Expo is helping to raise the awareness of the general public on the subject, although I have concerns about the choice of some sponsors that have always gone in the opposite direction.

Does this conscious choice require a lot of effort?

Definitely it takes time. But time is the big ingredient that we have forgotten and must be reintroduced not only in the kitchen but in all the areas of our lives if we want to raise the bar of quality to more humanly acceptable levels.

This doesn’t mean that you have to spend hours in the kitchen: if you dedicate a few

half-day to the choice of quality producers - perhaps taking advantage of the weekend to visit the country - then the excellent raw materials will do half the work, giving a special flavor to dishes. And even short preparations will give results of great level.

Some advice for a shopping list?

I recommend buying mainly from small producers.

For example we get the tomatoes directly from a small estate of Sicily and mozzarella from a Trentino breeder who produces cheese only with milk from mountain cows, raised free and fed on wild herbs.As far as possible, I recommend local products: seasonal vegetables and fruits grown less than 70 km from the place where you live, to gain in flavor, nutrients (which are scattered in the various steps of wholesale markets) and help land development. It doesn’t necessarily mean that in this way we should give up many products: for example, we use saffron grown in the province of Lecco which is great!So I suggest you to go outside the city, discovering the farmhouses in the area, the parks and the protected areas that have products in their brand (often organic) and reduce the time spent with the shopping cart in line at the checkout in favor of time spent in rediscovering Mother Earth and those who cultivate it with care, respect and love